Archive for the ‘Russian’ Category

Okay, every other day, I get into something different. Oh well. It’s Polyglot DREAMS, remember? LOL

Anyways, I have somehow gotten myself interested in the Assimil programs. I am working semi-actively on French and Spanish. I have decided I want to work with Platiquemos for Spanish, and Assimil for French. I am borrowing the Assimil French from the local library. Platiquemos is compliments (or is it complements? – whatever) of my donkey friends.

Tonight, I did Platiquemos Unit 2. (I’m planning to do a Unit a day, at least until I decide it’s too much. My Spanish is relatively solid in alot of areas (and relatively weak in others). I certainly don’t want to go to slow, or I will get bored and drop it. (Like everything else I do! LOL) If I keep up with that schedule, I’ll be done in 7 weeks. If it gets harder and becomes more of a challenge at some point, I’ll slow down to a comfortable pace.

I did the first four lessons of Assimil French today. Passive. I am going to follow the idea of the book, and work on the passive first, then add the active phase later. I will do a few lessons a day until I start working on new material, at which point I will slow down. I expect the first 20-30 lessons will go quickly after that, but then I will need to slow down. We’ll see.

I have been throwing the idea of a Germanic language around for a long time, and German would be the obvious choice. But for some reason, I have NO linguistic interest in German. I’m not sure why, but I feel like it’s “necessary” if I want to be multi-lingual. French, German, and Spanish – those are the ones I would have to do first. But German holds little appeal for me. I got ahold of the Assimil Dutch program (thanks again to my donkey friends), and I went through the first lesson of that tonight as well.

I doubt the Dutch thing will last, at least at the moment. Maybe in the future, once I reach a decent level in Spanish and French, I can study it more seriously. It’s kind of funny. For the longest time, I had no interest in learning French. Most French-speakers look down on Americans butchering their language, and I wanted NO part of that. At the time, I was looking at resources for the Kazakh language, and a friend of mine has an audio/book program for it, but its in French. So I decided to learn French. Now, my reasons for learning French are much more than that, but I thought it was funny that’s where my original inspiration came from.

I am just ITCHING to learn Russian. I got ahold of Harry Potter in Russian, both the books and the audiobooks, and I want to learn it so badly. I am waiting to get ahold of the Assimil Russian – the OLD version, not the new. I’ve got the audio, but I’m still looking for the book. I’ve studied Russian a little in the past, so going into it won’t be as scary as if I’ve never looked at the language.

We’ll see. Hopefully I can at least half-way keep up with my Spanish and French studies. I have a load of eBay stuff to do, which I hope to have done this week, but after that I’m allowing myself at least 90 minutes a day to study. (If my kids will go to bed by midnight, anyways!)

I hadn’t realized it’s been so long since I’ve posted. Life has been busy, the Christmas season is finally over, and the New Year is nearly upon us.

I recently decided that it was a mistake trying to learn Italian, before I had mastered Spanish. I was having a lot of trouble remembering Italian vocabulary without constantly comparing to Spanish, and the Spanish would continually pop into my head before the Italian would. It’s been about 10 years since I’ve studied my Spanish in any depth, and it has fallen into disuse. I had thought it would be smarter to gear away from the Spanish because of how much I did not remember, but I realized awhile ago that this is not really the case.

So I have decided to go back to my Spanish, to review and improve that before I move onto any other languages. That being said, I also do not want to get bored with it (and I know I will), so I have decided on Japanese as a secondary language. I spent alot of time debating between Chinese and Japanese, but I think Japanese is more doable at this point. Perhaps choosing to spread myself between two languages is a mistake, but I think it will help fill those points where you don’t feel like you’re advancing in the language you are focusing on.

I don’t like making specific goals, since I have no idea how much time I will have to devote to my language learning, nor how quickly I will progress with what time I do have. So to make it simple:

1. Spanish: My goal will be to learn 15 new words per day. That should give me a (new) vocabulary of about 5500 words at the end of the year. I will continue to listen to radio, podcasts, watch movies, and work through grammar and reading books, but those are things that are much harder to quantify. I’d like to be back to intermediate/advanced speaking proficiency by the end of 2007.

2. Japanese: My reading/writing goal will be to learn the 2 kana syllabaries, and begin learning the kanji, well enough to read through some basic Japanese texts. Three words per day for vocabulary, and working through grammar as time permits.

3. Other: I’ve kind of become fascinated with Lithuanian, and have a few books (with audio) on it. I also feel that I could learn a fair amount of another language or two (I’m thinking Russian and German, two languages completely different from the others I am focusing on) over time, if I commit myself to learning 3 words a day in each of them.

I think the important thing, dealing with the “other” languages, that if I decide to do that, I’m ONLY learning vocabulary. The only reason I would do this would be so that when I decide to focus on these languages, I will already have amassed a decent amount of vocabulary and it will (hopefully) be quite a bit easier to get further faster.

It seems like alot of words, all in all, but if I decide it’s too much, I may decide to forgo the German and Russian. With Spanish, that is my primary learning objective, to gain vocabulary. so I don’t think it’s really that big of a task. We shall see.

Hello, and welcome to my little language blog. I like languages, and I wish I could learn them all. Well, maybe not ALL of them, but at least 20-30 of them, to start out with! Let’s see – I know some Spanish, from long ago when I was in high school (and college). But it’s been 8-10 years since I’ve used it to any degree, so maybe I should start near the beginning to remember everything.

After I re-learn my Spanish, and get to a semi-proficient level, I’d like to learn Italian. And French and Portuguese. After that, I’d like to learn Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and maybe German. (Actually, I have no real desire to learn German, other than it is the most spoken Germanic language (other than English). From the year in high school I spent learning it – of which I retained next to nothing – I got the impression it is NOT a language I would want to spend my time in. However, there would be many advantages to learning German, and it would probably be less difficult if I already had a handle on Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. We’ll see, if (no – WHEN) I get to that point.

I would also really like to learn Russian (which would be a good jumping point to learn any and all Slavic languages). Japanese, for sure, is in my top 5 (after Spanish and French, along with Russian and Mandarin Chinese. It would be nice to learn Hindustani, Bengali, and a half dozen dialects of Arabic. Then I’d be able to talk to just about anyone in the world.

Realistically, at this point, I don’t have the time or energy to focus on a dozen different languages. Right now, I want to focus on improving my Spanish, and getting a basic, working knowledge of Italian. There will probably be a point where I start blogging in Spanish, but not for awhile yet.

My goals for the time being are this: 25 Spanish words per day (which adds up to more than 9k words in a year’s time) and half an hour of Italian. Right now, I’m working through Pimsleur, but it is becoming boring pretty fast. I am looking at Michal Thomas, Linguaphone, and Learn in Your Car programs. I wish I could get my hands on Assimil, but my local library does not have those programs (bittorrents, anyone?).

As a single mom (my fiance passed away in January 2006), I cannot afford to purchase many of the pricey programs out there. I’d rather spend what little money I have to take care of my twin four-year old daughters. (Who, right now, are in desperate need of some socks and some warm shirts – none of which I can afford at the moment.)

My pitiful financial situation aside, my love of languages, and the goal of being fluent in a few of them within the next few years, gives me something to do with what little spare time that I can find. So off I go on my journey to become near-fluent in Spanish, and to gain a basic understand of the Italian language. I think within the next month or two, I will add some Japanese to my schedule. Perhaps, with my limited study time, I will just work on a katakana or hiragana every day, or work on a handful of them over the weekend. That way, when I am ready and able to put the time into it, there will be one less mystery.